Putnam mom gets May hearing on county's gun-law opposition

Apr. 3, 2013

Richard T. Othmer Jr.

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CARMEL — The dialogue about gun reform that a Nelsonville mother of two and 500 others wanted to have with their representatives in Putnam County government following the shooting deaths of 26 first-graders and educators at a Connecticut school will take place instead in May.

Alexandra Dubroff, 38, the organizer of a 500-name petition, has been appealing to county lawmakers to open the dialogue since February, when the county Legislature — without public debate — voted to oppose New York’s new gun-reform law.

“I would hope they would realize that they made a mistake in not involving the public,” Dubroff said. “If they have issues with the law, we should be able to sit down and talk about it.”

The law signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo following the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre last year expands the ban on assault weapons and limits the number of bullets in a magazine. The Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act also requires recertification of gun permits every five years and requires mental-health providers to report at-risk patients to authorities. Those at-risk people could lose their firearms.

Putnam and other county governments, including Rockland, took exception to how quickly the law was enacted and to the alleged threat it posed to Second Amendment rights. Putnam objected that the law saddled counties with administrative costs associated with new reporting requirements.

A Putnam County nonbinding resolution in February called on Albany to annul the law and remove any costs Putnam would have to bear as a result of it.

“It’s not that we are anti-safety – the majority of the population is for common-sense changes in the law,” said Legislature Chairman Richard T. Othmer Jr., the District 3 representative from Kent. “We wanted to show the state government that we are not happy with the way the law was written and the way it was passed, and we want it to be readdressed.”

Dubroff, who said her perspective about guns and safety was shattered by the Newtown, Conn., shooting in December, has been speaking privately with Othmer about the right time and place to have a discussion about reform.

“She is on the May agenda for the Protective Services Committee,” Othmer said Tuesday. “She is going to get what she wants, just not as soon as she wants it.”

Dubroff said she thinks that she and the signers of her petition are being held to a higher standard than county lawmakers held themselves when they adopted the resolution without reviewing it first in the Protective Services Committee. Othmer responded that governments sometimes have to react quickly to breaking developments.

“What happened in Newtown was a horror show that none of us ever want to see happen again, but Albany shoved that law down the counties’ throats,” he said. “Most of the counties passed a similar resolution to ours.”